#informationsuite

The main challenge for the final product was to find a way to convey all the complex information of this new universe in a more natural and comprehensive way, embedding the prototypes I made in sketch without giving them an air of work in progress. After extensive discussions with Dinah and Tim, I decided to try my hand at coding a prototype version of a tech article site called Techlite, modeled after extant sites like Tech Crunch and Tech Insider, which could offer glimpses into various aspects (as categorized in the news feed) of this new hypothetical world. I sourced for relevant imagery and wrote 6 articles in an attempt to touch on some broader categories, such as satire, economics, the opensource coding community that finds new creative solutions, the hacktivist movements that aim to re-democratize information, and novel uses for mindware such as spirituality and meditation. As I was relatively new to html and css (I’ve only really done it during John Caserta’s web programming workshop), I was actually pretty nervous about how it was going to turn out and was so worried that everything would fail because the code wouldn’t work. Thankfully, it went rather smoothly, and I learnt a lot from the entire process both in terms of content generation (an extensive thought experiment) and the actual gritty details of coding in the html/css language. I intend to continue working on this idea over the summer as a personal coding project.

After week 1, I received really great critique about what I should focus on and I decided that what mattered more, instead of fleshing out the product itself, is actually the universe in which such a future technological mindware scenario is already convincingly in place. I shifted gears for the second week and thought hard about how the universe would work, including the sociopolitical issues that would arise from the commodification and privatization of the learning process. I created the companies Quartz, Apex, and Tidbit, which are modelled after Adobe / Apple, Samsung / indie companies, and T-mobile / Sprint / lower-income suppliers, as well as a hacktivist collective called Magpie, and drafted up a lot of notes about how these companies work. This sort of world-building felt very invigorating and I particularly enjoyed coming up with names for new file types, such as Mind Encryption Memo, because it felt like a thought experiment in generating new terminologies for a world that has become accustomed to a technological state we can hardly comprehend in our current capacity.

A preliminary keynote presentation proposing a product (for commentary purposes) that automates the learning process for a hypothetical future scenario in which information can be downloaded and synced directly to brain. The Information Suite, whose namesake is a parody of Adobe's Creative Suite, is a system that sells bundles of skill sets tailored for a variety of specific professions with the possibility of expanding into character profiles, which can be purchased in the form of subscriptions and downloaded to equip an individual with all the necessary skills to excel in a chosen field. By touching on extant divisions in price ranges, tiers of quality, and the prospect of commodifying and monetizing a necessity such as skill or knowledge, the Information Suite is a concept that aims to critique capitalist culture and demonstrate some of its social implications (low-income earners are unable to afford the monthly package and therefore lose out completely in the race), as well as provide the setting for a dystopian scenario in which the learning process is encrypted into a digital process. Can a human mind function like a computer, and what are the possible ramifications? Do we want to give people the option of programming their entire lives out, as long as they have the money to purchase the necessary "skills"? Much like real-life examples of high-income parents hiring tutors to supervise their children's playdates and instill social skills in them since young, or the expensive crutch of tuition needed to excel in the Asia's academic scene, the Information Suite digitizes this scenario and carries the embedded social issues to a more abstract, futuristic platform. What would living in a world like this be like?